The last thing to mend
by tearsofphoenix
Summary: "...the end of the end…" she echoed, and wondered: "How many ends are there in an end?" A little story through enlightening quotes from the Riddle of the Sphinx in Goblet of Fire. Spider, or spy, or spider? Will the Prince's awakening give the answer?
1. Chapter 1

**The last thing to mend **

By tearsofphoenix

_Standard disclaimer applies: everything is J.K. Rowling's. _

_Many thanks to Whitehound who goes on with patience and care editing and helping me with all my stories _

_This tale starts where DH ends, but before the epilogue, as if there were something more, that was kept hidden, to be said, somehow just like an end of the end…_

He had finally reached his deserved peace.

Sleep wasn't peaceful, though.

Once awake, maybe, he could put the blame on those delightful sandwiches that Kreacher had brought to him after he had voiced his wishes aloud.

He was dreaming, reliving everything he had had to fight up to the moment of the Last Battle… firstly the pictures in his mind had been glorious, then melancholy and, in a blur, the dream changed, showing to him the eyes and the voices of all those who had died in making his victory possible. They seemed to send a last greeting.

Like the presences perceived during Priori Incantatem, but unlike those met through the Resurrection Stone, echoes of the lives sacrificed for Harry's sake emerged through the fog of his mind, and he felt that this would be the last time he would see them, for many years to come.

Perhaps because of the memory of that graveyard, or rather from the weird quality of that dream, another remembrance came to him, after having called to everyone as if in farewell…

A powerful voice was telling once more the riddle of the Sphinx. It resounded in his head, repeating itself again and again, just as it had happened when the boy had needed to understand it bit by bit.

Harry woke up, abruptly, and like that previous time he thought that Hermione, not him, should have heard, and solved, the enigma.

He now knew that the solution was the spider but, still, something was amiss.

Suddenly, for fear of forgetting it, Harry picked up a parchment and a quill, then wrote all the verses without omitting a word.

When his friend, that he had called immediately and whom he had asked for help, read it, she smiled.

"How clever" Hermione commented, looking at the text.

Encouraged Harry told her of his dream, starting to enumerate all the names of those that he had seen.

Going on with the list he stopped, though, and frowned.

"I wonder... did they take Snape to Hogsmeade, or..."

Grieving over the corpses in the Great Hall, had he told anyone else where Snape's body now lay? Later he had described Snape's memories to his friends, but in the first confusion of his victory had he forgotten the wizard who had done so much for him, without a word of recognition, except when the truth about him had been cried to Voldemort before his defeat?

"…_a hard-to-find word…"_

Hermione had started speaking, and her reasoning was tending towards a similar conclusion:

"As you said, the first bit is 'spy', Harry, so, since we know who our spy was … And, now that I think of it, he wrote the riddle of the potions which protected the Stone, do you remember?"

"But that voice, the voice in the dream, I mean, it couldn't be his… It wasn't the voice of a man… I guess…Has anybody bothered to retrieve Snape's body?" Harry asked.

"I don't think so, it was just the three of us those who knew how he died …the end of the end…" she echoed then, and wondered: "How many ends are there in an end?".

"_Always_ the last thing to mend" he pointed out excitedly. "We must hurry! We didn't listen to all those tales of the Bard for nothing".

"Yes… always faithful and always the last in everyone's consideration" Hermione commented, then memories of Muggle fairy tales of her childhood came to her.

"Harry! Look at the last line!"

Running towards the Hospital Wing to fetch all the needed potions Hermione realized that, if some deity had sent that reminder, and if they could really be successful, to complete the healing of Snape one of them would have to wake up the Half-Blood Prince by kissing him.

Puzzled by the thought, she couldn't fathom who would be the least unwilling to do so, but, alas, they were already in the middle of it… the further middle, then, would be the concern of another, different story.

Albeit, she supposed, given _that_ final side of the task that awaited them, the end of the end would hardly be revealed by the author, neither credited nor written…

**A.N**. For those who, unlike Hermione, haven't memorized it, here is the riddle:

_First think of the person who lives in disguise,_

_Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies._

_Next tell me what's always the last thing to mend,_

_The middle of middle and end of the end?_

_And finally give me the sound often heard_

_During the search for a hard-to-find word._

_Now string them together, and answer me this,_

_Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?_

It will forever speak of Snape, to me as to many, since the reading of Duj's masterpiece "Who Lives in Disguise".

Recently, skimming through the pages of GoF for a totally different reason, my eyes felt on the little rhyme, once more, and I saw that perhaps not just the first two lines about the Spy are related to him, but nearly all of it, and in a way which led my thoughts to this hopeful path… and to this little whim.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Last Thing To Mend - CH 2**

By tearsofphoenix

Standard disclaimer applies – it's all JKR's

_This new chapter is another whim, a bonus extra that follows the supposed "end of the end" told in the first one. _

_A kind reviewer asked for a sequel, and albeit thinking that the story had already reached its end, after some time I remembered another thing that had puzzled me and some friends before DH: the constant presence of spiders in the books. _

_It was one of those recurrent issues that seemed to hint at something to be revealed later but, as in several other instances, it remains unexplained, and perhaps it was just one of the many intriguing red herrings set by JKR._

_Well, it seemed something interesting for this little continuation, that is a drabble __consisting of 600 words._

_Many thanks to Whitehound for the editing and to Lady Memory for the preview. As ever their help is wonderful._

If the sensation felt on awakening from that premonitory dream had been weird, how would Harry Potter define the tingle, just felt, that something else still had to be solved?

With Hermione's help, the message sent to him through his sleep had made sense, changing the answer of the riddle from _spider_ to _spy_, and thus leading the two friends to the place where Snape's body still lay.

That realization had convinced them that a rescue was still possible, despite the horror of the attack the wizard had suffered and the apparently irreversible deathly appearance of his body in the Shack.

Why, then, were spiders now plaguing Harry's memory and mind again?

Unlikely Ron, he didn't fear them, as they had been his only companions during the countless miserable hours he had spent in the cupboard in Privet Drive.

So, on the contrary, he considered those little arachnids helpful and, remembering how often they have been present during his adventures, even providential.

Searching for clues to interpret the new spur that wouldn't leave him alone, Harry thought then of Hagrid's words during his second year: apart from that terrible meeting with the Acromantulas, he acknowledged that following the spiders had been good advice…

And why not? Once, he had even seen one of them happily climbing Dumbledore's hat…

Perhaps there was a reason why _spider_ and _spy_ belonged to the same enigma… and perhaps what he was struggling to understand was something once more related to Snape.

"Hermione," he therefore asked, almost whimpering, "are you sure that one of us has to do this?"

Rolling her eyes, Hermione assured him that yes, the Half-Blood Prince had to be kissed, to fulfil the meaning of the riddle and to be sure of a happy conclusion.

But that particular final detail was something that, as Harry grudgingly voiced aloud, he was definitely _unwilling_ to do, no matter how much he had changed his opinion on the man or how much he didn't mind spiders: for sure, they were both _creatures_ he wasn't going to kiss!

"I certainly am, Harry. Circe, how can you compare him to… to a spider?"

Merlin, the more he thought about it, the closer he felt to the answer: if one started to reason on riddles, rebuses or metaphors, _pincers_ was an anagram of _Princes _and, well, the street in which the wizard had lived had been named something like the _end of a web-maker_, hadn't it?

The young wizard tried to explain all his reasoning to his friend, but this time she didn't seem to share the same understanding, nor an equal purpose.

"Rubbish!" she hissed. "Now you'll start claiming that his spidery handwriting too is a clue!"

In the meantime, the healers had finished and had left the Hospital Wing. Everything was quiet, and Harry paled visibly in anguish.

Sighing, Hermione approached the white bed in which Snape lay, and where everything that could revive him had been attempted.

Tentatively, she lowered her head, softly brushing her lips against Snape's…

And, suddenly, Harry perceived the powerful magic spreading around.

Then, seeing how a flushed Hermione had sat next to the bed rather than withdraw in disgust, noticing how she was holding the wizard's hand firmly between hers, and hearing her whispering tender, hopeful words to definitely wake him up or, it might be, to lull him to sleep…

… well, that was when, finally, Harry Potter understood what was the last thing that was going to be _strung together_… and realized that, almost certainly, Ron had been right to fear a danger coming from spiders!

_Reviews are most welcome and, as this update shows, a nice motivation for further tales!_

_A.N. The text of the Riddle, that is partially quoted here, too, in italics, has been reproduced at the bottom of the first chapter of this story._

_The spider on Dumbledore's hat is in HBP ch.4._


	3. Chapter 3

**The Last Thing To Mend **

By tearsofphoenix

Standard disclaimer applies – it's all JKR's

_This story was meant to be just a whim showing a hopeful possibility hidden in canon, and to be a little one shot. Once started with a sequel-chapter, though, it seemed irresistible to me to complete the tale by writing the awakening of the Prince; so this is why this drabble - consisting of exactly 900 words - came out, once again told mainly from Harry's pov and through rhymes and quotations._

_A big thank you, this time too, to Whitehound for the editing and to Lady Memory for the preview. _

Hermione's abrupt movements startled Harry, who was still mesmerized by the outcome of the enchantment. As if it burned, she let go of Snape's hand, blushing and leaving the room in haste.

Relaxing, Harry thought that Hermione's flight, albeit delayed, meant that she had finally come back to her senses. Or perhaps that the magic witnessed till some moments before had run its course, once the healing was accomplished.

Approaching the wizard's bed, the boy noticed a slight movement from Snape, and understood that he was finally awakening.

Half-closed eyes, the sensation of a soft touch still lingering on his lips... Snape was indeed becoming aware of his surroundings…

…in which Potter, his last sight before passing out, was showing himself again, this time as his first vision after the ordeal. And the boy was sporting such an unexpected and pleased grin that, connecting it to his first conscious perception, Snape's horrified eyes shut again, while the young wizard went calling for the Medi-witch.

She arrived at once and declared that, thank Merlin, recovery from now on would be fast and certain.

Having heard those words, Harry left; but, still disconcerted by the turn of events, he decided all the same to keep a watchful eye on the man during the days to come.

A week later, seeing that Hermione had never been among those who had come to greet the revived hero, he decided that he could, from now on, lower his vigilance a bit.

And, once having dismissed his worry, he was also glad of the fact that, in those seven days, Snape had got not just a full recovery, but perhaps more than he had ever received before in his life.

From his watching corner, Harry recalled the many visits, listing them in his mind like a Christmas Carol…

The first day of Snape's recovery McGonagall gave him her apologies and fragrant short-bread.

The second day Sprout cuddled him with flowers and chocolate.

The third day Slughorn offered him a bottle of old Ogden's and a résumé of the latest news.

The fourth day Sinistra brought him new robes for when he would finally leave his bed.

The fifth day Trelawney lent him her crystal ball to see happy years forthcoming.

The sixth day Hagrid put on Snape's bedside table a little pet for good luck.

The seventh day Flitwick gave him an explanation about the charm involved in his healing.

Unbeknownst to Harry, a similar train of thought was lingering in Snape's mind: had someone else really cared for him, showing openly as much affection as the charm required?

Remembering who he had seen at his bedside, he couldn't believe it; so, shrugging, he took his new pet – a twitching spider in an enchanted web, at which the Charms Professor had winked oddly – and, shaking his head, left the room.

His stride put an end to the boy's reverie, while the sudden sight of Hermione reawakened Harry's attention. She halted, mumbled a few incomprehensible words to Snape, then looked at the man, her chin raised as if awaiting a spiteful comment.

Snape, however, didn't talk but, certainly unaware of his own sudden action, cupped her chin with a gentle gesture. Under Harry's disbelieving stare, something seemed to be spread through that touch. As if enlightened by an unexpected realization, the wizard's expression relaxed and, looking at the shadows under the witch's eyes with great intensity, he finally spoke.

"What's troubling you so much, Miss Granger?"

Wrong-footed, she babbled something about lack of sleep, adding that she had asked Madam Pomfrey for a vial of Dreamless Sleep…

"I've tried to do without that, but I can't, though I'm afraid of becoming addicted…"

"I… ah… am not new to these troubles myself," he interrupted. "In fact, I brewed a variation of that potion for myself, in order to reduce that risk."

She relaxed and finally smiled, giving him an understanding nod, full of sympathy.

"So," he continued, "if this is really what you need, you may consider accepting some of my reserve … or exploring alternative solutions…"

She didn't show surprise at such kind interest, and nodded again. Hesitantly, but quite suddenly, he added, blushing:

"I was just going to my quarters, so… shall we discuss this more comfortably? Would you… as they say… step into my parlour?"

Harry frowned. Those last words were ringing like an alarming echo in his memory!

Hermione's smile, though, had brightened so much that the boy was forced to abandon his worries. During the last several days in fact she had looked miserable, and Harry had blamed it on the war, on Ron's leaving with his family, on her parents' absence… but now her sadness was definitely vanished, no doubt there.

And no surprise, either, at such an affinity: putting aside even his consideration on Ron's behalf, Harry surrendered, thinking not just of the charmed kiss he had witnessed, but of how both of them had always been brave, protective and devoted in spite of appearances…

… so, watching them leaving companionably, he remembered a Muggle proverb he had heard when he was a child and, alone in his cupboard, he used to watch those little spiders while dreaming of a better time.

Its words seemed the best to tell, at last, the moral and the end of the story:

« If you wish to live and thrive,  
let the spider run alive. »

AN. _The line "Will you walk into my parlour?", often quoted as "Step into my parlour" or "Come into my parlour", is the opening line of "The Spider and the Fly", a famous poem by Mary Howitt which, along with the English proverb put at the end of this story, seemed to me very nice for the conclusion of this series of drabbles._

_For those who don't remember it, I'm copying just the first strophe, since it is longish, but those who are curious to read all of it the verses can be easily found on line._

"Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly,  
"'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;  
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,  
And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there."  
"Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain,  
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again." 


End file.
